India's response to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai has implications for stability in India, and in the whole of South Asia. By calling themselves the "Deccan Mujahideen", the terrorists are clearly trying to stress their Indian-ness. The Deccan is the large plateau of Southern and Central India. They claim to be angry about the treatment of Muslims throughout India, and not just in Kashmir.

India had long been proud of the fact that Indian Muslims had not been involved in terrorist attacks on home soil. But in the past couple of years, bomb attacks have been linked to the "Indian Mujahideen", thought to have grown out of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which is banned in India. And these groups clearly have links with radical groups in Pakistan, in particular Lashkar-e-Toiba, which is in turn related to al-Qaida.

The attacks put the Indian government in a dilemma. It is clearly preferable for India to blame a "foreign hand" (implicitly or explicitly Pakistan) for such attacks than to accept that there are some Indian Muslims alienated enough to carry out such atrocities. But blaming Pakistan threatens to undermine relations between India and Pakistan, and to further weaken the position of Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari. On top of the security situation in the tribal areas and a weak economy, worsening relations with India (or potentially with his military if he agrees with India's analysis) would make his position close to untenable.

Domestically, India suffers from a lack of political consensus on how to tackle terrorism. The main opposition party, the BJP, calls for the reintroduction of pretty draconian anti-terror laws, allowing for detention without trial. In the past, such laws were abused, and fed into alienation among those affected. Following this attack, and recent bomb attacks in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad, the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, seems likely to have to move towards some legislation of this nature, for his domestic credibility.

The hope is that party political differences can be put aside and a consensus forged on tackling terrorism. But the notion of Indian Muslims is not apolitical. Indian Muslims have long been seen as a Congress vote-bank. So the BJP can accuse Congress of pandering to this community at the expense of the wider national interest. The danger is that the debate about terrorism becomes a debate about Muslims in India, an outcome that would benefit the perpetrators of the attacks more than the Indian state.